There is a gin joint somewhere in the depths of Edinburgh that has your name written all over it. It can take you back to the 1920s and the silky drawl of a gal who can attract more than the interest of a few, but the attention of the many; has the low life and high achievers brushing jowl to cheek on the bar stools, chatting small talk and talking big. All it needs is you to turn up.
Once there, expect to be entertained by some high falutin', rootin' tootin' jazz and dance. Soft lights and sultry shadows seduce you into the realms of soft whispers with a physical edge. There is testosterone and tried and tested seduction techniques all around you. It is easy to speak and easy to love.
There is no pretension here as our eight performers sashay around the stage with set pieces from drinking from the bottles, which are also part of the sassy set, to falling out over a chair and fighting over a dame. Up stage left, there are a table and chairs which become a stage for our temptress and a holding pen for her suitors. It’s of its time, but it oozes class.
Once we get to the group dances, there is a real verve and click to the whole thing. The piece with the chair, where two of our performers are arguing over it, takes a bit of work to really buy into it, but it has that barroom, macho, schoolyard feel to it, so it works in situ. There is some class in the fight between the largest in the room and a couple of likely gung-ho heroes that ends with a drink and a sore head or two, which also is very barroom brawl.
What makes it out to be more than a simple tale told is, for the most part, the staging of it. For example, there is a costume change, done in shadow, that suggests more than it exposes. It is sheer genius.
But then the counterpoint comes with a very strange ending. The final pose is effective—the lead-up to it less so. Having seen some fancy footwork, it ends with a metaphorical fizzle out rather than a whole-scale bang—which it really deserves.
It’s a pity, because this is truly the epitome of a class act. It has so much within it that really does make things go with that swing throughout. The female performer has strength and depth, and though it is suggested at one point she has a husband in the company—who adopts the pose of a man with a pack of Gauloises on his shoulders—she has independence and strut in all that she does. It suggests a time, a period of debauchery and confusion in a performance which holds itself together until the end.
The dance is fantastic, togetherness superb and the production values in evidence are a match for the environment it seeks to create. If only we could have finished better, then this would have been a near perfect package of all that jazz…